


Take Me Home

by thedailygrind



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, JYJ (Band)
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21647176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedailygrind/pseuds/thedailygrind
Summary: After a devastating car accident in Tokyo, Kim Jaejoong wakes up with no memory of the past 11 years. In his mind, it's 2008. He's 22 and ready to take on the world, TVXQ is fresh off their 4th Golden Disk Award, Mirotic fever is sweeping Asia, and he's madly in love with one Jung Yunho.Except, he's not.Because in 2019, TVXQ is a 2 man band, and Jung Yunho hasn't spoken to him in over a decade.
Relationships: Jung Yunho/Kim Jaejoong
Comments: 24
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

“Yeoboseyo?”

“Yunho?”

It’s a voice he never expected to hear in a million years. And even though it’s been almost a decade, Yunho knows it intimately, like an itch under his skin he can't scratch.

“Yunho,” Jaejoong says, his voice small and confused. “Where are you?”

He inhales deeply, his voice bordering on hysterical, “I don’t know where I am.  Avex says Junyoung hyung doesn’t manage me anymore and won’t put me through. And there are reporters and people claiming to be my agents, and I don't know who any of these people are—”

Jaejoong takes in a gasping breath that sounds more like a choked sob, “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Please,” Jaejoong is saying, the terror apparent in his voice, “please come.”

And because Yunho’s never been able to deny Jaejoong anything, he walks off, right in the middle of filming a television series, hails a cab and buys a ticket to Narita.


	2. Chapter 2

“Yunho,” Jaejoong says, bewildered. 

He looks so small and frail on the hospital bed, IVs poking painfully out of his wrist, and a machine that beeps emphatically as he tries to sit up.

“I’m sorry,” Jaejoong is babbling, “I didn’t know who to call. I woke up here and,” he sounds close to tears now, “I don’t remember anything.”

_Just the number of that cellphone, the one Yunho keeps just in case Jaejoong will call._ He wonders what possessed him to carry it around the past ten years. A cellphone with just one contact number. Jaejoong’s.

“They keep saying there isn’t TVXQ anymore.” Jaejoong says, he looks pained. “They don’t— I don’t. What’s going on?”

Wordlessly, Yunho grabs a laptop, pulls up a Daum article that extensively covers their lawsuit and storms out of the room.

It’s 2019, and despite everything, Yunho’s made it through a decade without them. He'd thought about holding a celebration, to congratulate himself for finally, finally moving on.

He stares at the calendar, and the hundreds of red streaks.

He cancels the tick marks in his diary and starts again.

Day 1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My goal is to actually start finishing the millions of things I start on a whim. And it looks like the only way this fic wants to be written is in little drabble-y chunks.


	3. Chapter 3

Yunho flies back to Seoul that evening.

But as he lands, it’s splashed all over the news, in bold, the headlines reading 'JYJ singer, Kim Jaejoong, injured in a vehicular pile up in Tokyo'. The newspapers won’t leave it alone, and three days after, there are photos of Jaejoong bandaged, unconscious and bleeding, an oxygen tank attached to his mouth.

It’s the first time in years Yunho’s looked at him. He’s always tried so carefully to ignore those photos.

But Jaejoong’s splashed all over the news, and at some point its like a dam breaks and Yunho buys every magazine, every tabloid he can find on jaejoong’s condition; compulsive like a starving man seeing food for the first time, like an addict who’s quit, his hands shaking with guilt every time.

He shouldn't, really, he thinks, thumbing through the pages. The photos are awful, he doesn't know who manages Jaejoong's PR these days, but they should be fired. He runs a hand over a photo, zoomed in close on Jaejoong's broken cheek. No one should get to see these at all.

It was brief, that time in Japan, when Yunho had stormed out, and then clenched his fists all the way on the airplane, bitterly regretting it, annoyed that he was making the same mistake again, the same one he'd made too many times before. But at night he closes his eyes and sees every inch of Jaejoong he’s missed over the years, comparing the black and white grainy tabloid photos to the memory he has of Jaejoong in perfect technicolor. 

Jaejoong in a hospital bed, fragile and bewildered. Older and exhausted, but beneath that, beneath those bruised eyebags and sunken cheekbones, there'd been something else too. 

That wild spark, that love for life, the one he used to wake up to so many years ago. 

It’s Jaejoong, he thinks, _his_ Jaejoong.

He can't help the flare of something deep and desperate that rises up inside him.

_Hope._


	4. Chapter 4

“It’s short term memory loss,” Dr Park says. He’s nearly forty, with a receding hairline and kind eyes that put Jaejoong at ease immediately. “The CT scans showed some mild bruising in your hind brain, well, that’s to be expected since you were hit pretty hard.”

Jaejoong swallows, drumming his fingers against the table. “Do you think I’ll get my memories back?”

“It’s hard to say for sure,” Dr Park says, “in extreme cases like these, it’s hard to predict how the human body will respond to trauma. But there’s nothing physically wrong with you, Jaejoong-sshi, so I am optimistic about a full recovery. The most important thing is to rest and to focus on getting better."

After a few days, the hullabaloo of press subsides. Jaejoong sits in his private ward, staring out of the window as the leaves turn red-gold, and then brown. 

Jaejoong’s scars are starting to fade, and his bones are beginning to mend. But despite his miraculous physical recovery, his mind remains a complete blank.

He spends too many hours thinking about Yunho in those early days, and cannot reconcile all these memories with his new reality. Not when it feels like just yesterday that they were at the top of the world; five boys and their impossibly large dreams, the world at their feet. 

It feels like just hours ago that they’d taken their final bows in Tokyo Dome together, Yoochun bawling so hard he could barely speak, and Junsu smiling bravely through his tears as the crowd of 50,000 waved their red light sticks, setting the concert hall alight in a fiery red ocean.

Jaejoong had barely made it off stage before he’d been dragged into a dark corner, Yunho’s warm lips assaulting his, his hands curled in Jaejoong’s sweaty hair, as he’d laughed into Jaejoong’s mouth, his mic carefully muted.

“I’m so happy,” Yunho murmurs, when he pulls away and Jaejoong presses their foreheads together, and says “I’m so happy we’re here together.”

Jaejoong had been happy too. He wants to tell Yunho as much but--

It’s a stark contrast to waking up alone in a hospital bed, realizing the people he’s loved and trusted his entire life with want nothing to do with him.

_ "What happened?" _ He wonders, tracing a finger over the smiling faces of five young men, young and wild and happy. _"How did we end up like this?"_

A month later, Jaejoong gets discharged with little fanfare. His manager books him a flight back to Seoul in first class, careful to ensure every sense of privacy is protected. Jaejoong sits on the plane, ramrod straight, uncomfortably bundled up in a scarf and dark glasses, bracing himself for a horde of fans that don't come. As he picks up his bags from the arrival gate, he hears murmured giggles behind him.

"Omo, isn't that your favorite band member? He looks handsome!"

"Eomma," the daughter protests, leading her mother away, "how could you even say that, our Taeyong is so young and handsome, don't compare him to that ajhusshi!"

Jaejoong picks up his bags and thinks that back then, he'd never imagined missing the thunderous screams that followed them in every airport. Back then, he could've never imagined that TVXQ's glorious start would finish like this, not in a bang, but in a whisper.

Even stars fade and die, Jaejoong thinks. Even stars grow old and forgotten.

A black limousine drops Jaejoong off outside a fancy apartment complex, so grand that it makes his head spin. He barely makes it out the door before a footman hurries over, taking his luggage and gallantly leading him into a too-large apartment filled with strange sculptures and ugly plates with faces on them. He lies awake at night, looking at the malicious faces gleaming at him from the counter tops.

He doesn’t call Yunho again.

"We don't talk anymore," Yunho had said, curtly the last time, so formal and solemn it was almost as if they were strangers.

Jaejoong lies in bed, and can't help looking through his text message history. 

He scrolls, and scrolls, but he gets all the way to 2017 before he finds a text to a name he recognizes. It's a brief message to Junsu. "Happy birthday!" It reads, simply like Jaejoong couldn't be bothered to write anything more sincere.

He checks the message history between himself and Changmin and Yoochun. 

It's blank.

It's been eight years.

Jaejoong could never have imagined his life could have changed so drastically.

Jaejoong's apartment is big and foreign. Inside of it he feels lost, but his body, disconcertingly, remembers. If he doesn’t think about it too much, he finds himself brushing his teeth, not quite knowing how he knew where the toothbrushes and toothpaste were. When his pot of kimchi stew bubbles over, Jaejoong finds himself magically producing paper towels from under the stove to wipe up the spill.

At night, he stares at his luxurious apartment that feels too big and empty for one and thinks, “maybe I wanted this.”

Lying alone in his king sized bed, Jaejoong can’t quite bring himself to believe it.


	5. Chapter 5

Seoul in 2020 is nothing like what Jaejoong remembers. 

Outside his window, skyscrapers swallow the skyline, forming a futuristic metropolis that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a Terminator movie. It turns out that even though Jaejoong’s life has ground to a halt, the world keeps on turning, and life keeps going on.

He showers slowly, fumbling with the unfamiliar taps and yelping when a gush of ice cold water sprays over him, sending shampoo suds into his eyes. He climbs out of the shower, shivering, only to come face to face with a full length mirror, where he stops and gasps, seeing himself, _really_ for the first time.

A stranger stares back at him. There’s the telltale hint of crow’s feet beginning at the corner of his eyes. He looks older now, the baby fat of his youth melting away to a defined masculine jawline. Fat water droplets cling to his hair, trekking long rivers down the pale skin of his toned chest. Jaejoong takes in a shaky breath, tracing the reflection of his tattoos in the mirror, the black spidery crawl of ink that runs up his arms and back, a museum of words and experiences that bear no meaning for him.

By his bedside table, there’s a drawer stuffed full of his old passports. They're filled, every page with countless stamps, purple, pink, a myriad of hideous and beautiful colors bleeding through the thin papyrus, of memories he loves and memories that don't quite belong to him yet.

He sits down, heart in his throat as he tries to sort through the things he remembers, the things that feel real.

There is no one defining moment for DBSK, just moments of cluttered, confused, experiences which blur in his mind. He can't remember winning the Daesung in 2008, but he remembers the euphoria, the acknowledgement and the pride, feeling so full he thought he'd burst. He doesn't remember when they become a family, but he remembers them sobbing together backstage, the warmth of five figures holding each other, and the smell of the curve between Yunho's neck and Changmin's shoulder. 

He thinks of the dehydration, the perpetual exhaustion, the never getting enough sleep. He thinks about why he stuck to it even though some days were hard, and some injuries were too bad to recover from.

For the first three years, it was the exhilaration of the stage, the screams, the intoxicating feeling of performing. But now, it's knowing there'll be jiggae at three am, that Junsu will hold him when Yoochun won't and that the five of them share a bond that would put the most romantic love songs to shame.

It's over now. But for Jaejoong, it hasn't even truly begun.


	6. Chapter 6

Jaejoong.

It’s an image that plays in Yunho’s mind over, and over again, surfacing when he’s least expecting it, and therefore most vulnerable. It’s Jaejoong’s face he sees when he closes his eyes and tries to go to sleep, it’s Jaejoong’s silhouette he sees when he’s eating breakfast, casually leaning over the stove. 

Finding Jaejoong’s ghost everywhere makes Yunho ache for the past. He brings up all the dangerous emotions Yunho’s boxed away, the ones he didn’t want to deal with, the ones that were too painful to revisit.

They had given up so much to become TVXQ, the gods who rose over the East. Yunho had bristled with pride when TVXQ became a household name, when Cassiopeia had been indicted into the Guinness Book of Records. 

There had been greats before them - HOT, Shinhwa, SES, but back then Yunho had truly believed something set them apart, that TVXQ would somehow skip over getting old and being forgotten. 

That they’d be golden forever.

How wrong he was.

Back then, Yunho needed something to believe in, to justify how hard they were running themselves, all the injuries and the sleepless nights and the operations and the quick fixes. For the way Jaejoong’s knee used to always hurt on rainy days because once upon a time Jaejoong sold his soul to SM Entertainment and they’d run his body so ragged his leg wouldn’t hold on its own. Yunho can’t count how many times they’ve been sick, been hit, been screamed at, been injured. 

Back then, the only thing they could hold on to was each other.

And then one autumn day in 2009, when they’re in the middle of recording their next album, Jaejoong stops.

The sound engineer leans over the panel, clicking the comms, “Jaejoong-ah, is everything all right?”

Jaejoong blinks, like he’s seeing the studio, the room, and everyone in it for the first time. 

“Yunho and Changmin should do this part,” he says, his voice echoing in the small recording booth.

“What are you talking about?” The engineer says, starting to get impatient, “it’s your part. It’s been marked out for you."

“Let them do it,” Jaejoong insists, waving Changmin into the booth, “just in case.”

_Just in case,_ Jaejoong had said, carelessly, thoughtlessly.

Should Yunho have guessed that that was the beginning of the end?

Later, when Dispatch breaks the news, Yunho takes the studio copy of Maximum, the one and only take with Jaejoong’s vocals and snaps it in half.


	7. Chapter 7

For tonight, Changmin’s booked them a private room at a fancy restaurant overlooking the Han river. The mahogany table gleams under the warm skylights, as waitresses bustle around the room, sneaking glances between the two of them, pretending like they’re not trying to catch the latest whiff of gossip.

“So,” Changmin says, casually reclining back in his chair, “how is he?” 

Yunho smiles pointedly at the waitress hovering by the door until she flushes embarrassedly and leaves, shutting the door behind her.

He turns back to Changmin with a sigh, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Do we really need to talk about it?”

“No.”

Changmin doesn’t need to go into specifics; they’ve known each other for a lifetime and there’s only ever been one ‘he’ in Yunho’s life. Jaejoong who waltzed into Yunho’s perfectly organized life twenty years ago and filled it with so many ‘bests’ and ‘firsts’. Yunho’s first time, Yunho’s first love, Yunho’s first drunken fight on an empty street in Shibuya.

Changmin watches the emotions flit across Yunho’s face. “But you want to and I’m not opposed to hearing it.”

“What I want,” Yunho says, stabbing his fork into a piece of chicken with too much force and accidentally sending a splatter of brown sauce all over the tablecloth, “is to congratulate you on your upcoming marriage.”

The teasing remark hanging off Changmin’s tongue abruptly vanishes at the mention of his wife. In its place, Yunho sees the way Changmin’s eyes soften almost immediately, like he can’t help himself with how much he adores her. 

It makes something in Yunho ache. 

“Congratulations, Changmin-ah,” Yunho says, wondering if this is how proud parents feel. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks, hyung,” Changmin says, quietly. He stares down at his hands, searching for the words.

“You know, all those years we were working ourselves to the bone and flying from one continent to the next, I always knew it was because I was running toward this. Everything else, that was just the prologue.”

“It’s about time you got your happy ending then,” Yunho says and Changmin smiles impishly back, looking all of eighteen again.

They stay till late, talking and reminiscing about the past. Yunho doesn’t realize how quickly the time’s slipped by until one of the flustered waitresses knocks, and apologetically tells them that the restaurant closed an hour ago. Embarrassed, Yunho leaves an extra generous tip as they get up to leave.

“Are you gong to be okay?” Changmin asks, quietly, when they make it outside.

At three am, the hustle and bustle of Seoul has died down and it’s just the two of them now, standing on an empty street. 

No one had said it back then, but Changmin’s marriage marks the final page of TVXQ’s long and glorious career. Their fans are older and the fantasy is gone now, Yunho doesn’t know what comes next.

Yunho suddenly feels very old and very tired. 

“I,” Yunho falters, ”I don’t really know.”

“You’re free now, hyung,” Changmin says, softly, “maybe it’s time to stop thinking about the band and start doing things for yourself.”

Suddenly, it’s like a dam breaks, and Yunho finds himself digging up archived footage of them.

He watches videos of them in Japan, their first History in Japan where they’re incredibly young and can barely mumble their way through Japanese. Yoochun and Jaejoong sitting at the piano improvising an R&B version of Happy Birthday

He watches videos of them and is surprised at how much he stares at Jaejoong, at their bold and heated exchanges, in the glimpses of how they look at each other, when no one is watching. All the times where they’d hold hands, where they were so fucking reckless in interviews but had been too big for management to do anything about it.

So that’s why two days later, unshaved and under slept Yunho shows up to Jaejoong’s luxurious apartment in the middle of Gangnam and rings his doorbell.

“Tell me why you did it,” Yunho says, when Jaejoong opens the door, eyes widening in shock. “After all this time you never told me why.”

Jaejoong’s eyes rove his face, drinking the sight of him in and it’s so familiar and foreign at once, that Yunho almost wants to take him into his arms and kiss him. 

“I wish I could,” Jaejoong says, quietly. “I wish I knew. But I don’t remember.”


End file.
